Easter as a Chapter in the Mystery Wisdom of Man

Esoteric Easter: Lecture III

III

I

N EXPANDING TODAY
what we have been discussing in the previous lectures I should like to take
up the astronomical aspect of the Easter Festival; and in order to do
this it will be necessary to touch upon some of the facts referring
to the so-called secret of the Moon.

During all epochs
in which people knew of the Mystery wisdom, the secret of the Moon
was a familiar concept and was invariably associated with the being
of man, in so far as the latter is related to the whole cosmos. We
must keep clearly in mind that in his entirety man is related to the
whole cosmos, just as he is connected with the Earth as regards his
physical body. Now, it is a concomitant of the materialistic
age that of the vast cosmos, which expresses its spirituality in the
form of the fixed star constellations and the movements of the
planets, nothing has remained in human consciousness but the outer
appearance of the stars and the computation of their movements
(if they are planets) and so forth.

The manner in
which astronomy is studied today is the same as it would be if one
studied the relative measurements and the outer conditions of
movement in the human organism, remaining unaware that a
psycho-spiritual element pervades the physical organism and
comes to expression in these measurements and conditions of
movement.

In the human being a unified psycho-spiritual element manifests
itself, held together by the ego. But spiritual observation discloses
that the cosmic organism expresses itself, not in a unified
psycho-spiritual entity, but in a multiplicity, an immeasurable,
limitless multitude of spiritual beings that reveal themselves
through the forms of the fixed star constellations, through the
movements of the planets, through the light raying forth from the
stars, and so on.

Inner man is
related to this spiritual multiplicity in the stars as is physical
man to Earth substances that can serve as nourishment. And man's
closest connection with the universe has to do with what we can call
the secret of the Moon.

External observation of the Moon shows it to be in a state of
metamorphosis as seen from the Earth. We see the full luminous face,
we see it half-illuminated, then one-quarter — and there is
also that stage in which it entirely withdraws from outer view,
called the stage of new Moon. And then we have again the return to
full Moon.

All this is nowadays explained as though the Moon were merely
some kind of a body moving about in cosmic space, illuminated by the
Sun from different directions and hence presenting various aspects.
But that does not exhaust what the Moon means to the Earth, and
especially to Earth men. In the case of the Moon in particular we
must understand that if we look out at something as readily
perceptible in its physical surfaces as, say, the full Moon —
that is, something that presents a physical aspect — this
aspect embodies something totally different from what is
inherent in a new Moon. True, the new Moon cannot achieve direct
physical expression on account of correlated cosmic conditions;
but we must not conclude that because it does not express itself as a
physical phenomenon, it has no effect. When our knowledge of
the firmament tells us that it is new Moon, this means that the Moon
is present in an invisible but all the more spiritual way than when
appearing as full Moon in physical light. So the Moon is present
— now wholly physical, now wholly spiritual, and we have the
rhythmic alternation of its physical and spiritual expression.

And now, in order to understand the crux of the matter, we must
recall a fact with which you are familiar from my
Occult Science, an Outline,
namely, that at one time the
Moon was within the Earth: it was part of the Earth body. It passed
out of the Earth and became a satellite, as the term goes. In other
words, it split off from the Earth and now circles it. When it was
one with the Earth its influences upon human beings were exerted from
the Earth.

Naturally, in the
time when man existed and developed upon an Earth that still
contained the Moon, he was a very different being. When this Moon
withdrew, the Earth became poorer by exactly what the Moon
represented; and henceforth the lower

Diagram 1Click image for large view

part of man was formed and held fast by the other forces —
no longer by the Earth-and-Moon forces, but by the former only. On
the other hand, the influences that emanated from within the Earth at
the time it still contained the Moon now act upon man from without,
from the Moon.

We can put it this way: formerly the Moon forces came in
contact first with the lower limbs — the feet and legs
— and then streamed upward from below; but since the Moon
withdrew from the Earth they act in the opposite direction, from the
head downward. But this implies that the task of these forces
has become a very different one, and the nature of this task comes
into evidence in the experiences man has when he descends from the
pre-earthly to the earthly life. When he has completed the period
between death and a new birth and has absolved all the requirements
of soul and spirit demanded during that period, he prepares to
descend to Earth, to unite with the bodily-physical principle
transmitted to him by his father and mother. But before it is
possible for his ego and astral body to unite with the physical body
he must provide himself with an etheric body, which he attracts from
the surrounding cosmos.

Diagram 2Click image for large view

This process has radically changed since the Moon withdrew from
the Earth. Before that time man needed forces, when approaching
the Earth again, that would enable him to shape the all-pervading
ether into the form of an etheric body around his ego and astral
body. These forces he drew, as he approached the Earth, from the Moon
which was then within it. He still does; but the point is that since
the splitting off of the Moon they come to him from outside the
Earth. This means that immediately before entering the Earth
life he must appeal to the power of the Moon forces — that is,
to something cosmic — if he would build his etheric
body.

This etheric body must be formed in such a way that it has, as it
were, an outer side and an inner side. Let us think of it quite
graphically, formed with an outer side and an inner side. When the
outer side is being formed the forces of light are needed, for, like
other things of substance, the etheric body is fashioned principally
out of the flooding light of the cosmos. But sunlight cannot be
employed for this purpose: it does not provide the forces that would
enable man to build his etheric body. This calls for sunlight
that is reflected by the Moon and thereby radically altered; and all
the light coming to us from the Moon — in fact, all the light
shining from the Moon into the cosmos — contains the forces
that enable man to form the outer side of his etheric body when he
descends to Earth.

And on the other
hand, the forces man needs to form the inner side of his etheric body
are the spiritual emanations of the new Moon; so that his ability to
form the outer and the inner side is related to this rhythm of the
outer light and dark of the Moon.

But all this that the Moon forces achieve for man, as it were,
goes back to the fact that the Moon is truly not the mere physical
body about which modern science tells us fairy tales, but a body
wholly permeated by spirituality, comprising a multiplicity of
spiritual beings. I have repeatedly explained that when the Moon
withdrew from the Earth, it was not merely physical matter that
streamed out into cosmic space: those ancient beings, man's
primordial teachers, who lived on the Earth not in physical
bodies but in a spiritual form, these passed with the Moon out into
the universe and there founded a sort of Moon colony. We have
therefore to distinguish between the physico-etheric and the
psycho-spiritual constituents of the Moon, remembering that again the
latter is not a unity but a
multiplicity.

Now, the entire
life of this spirituality in the Moon depends upon the manner in
which those beings observe cosmic conditions from their point of
view, from the point of view of the Moon. Figuratively expressed: the
spiritual beings of the Moon direct their gaze primarily to what is
of greatest importance for them, to the planets of our orbit; and
upon the inferences of these observations depends all that
takes place on the Moon, as well as all that contributes to providing
man in the right way with the forces needed for forming his etheric
body.

Certain of the
Mysteries knew this. It was ancient Mystery knowledge in some of the
sanctuaries that the constellations and the movements in the
planetary system were observed from the Moon, and the actions of the
Moon beings determined accordingly. This was expressed by relating,
in human consciousness, the Moon with the forces of other planets,
the Moon being the point from which are determined those cosmic
contexts that are linked with the forming of the human etheric body.
This is reflected in the names of the days of the week:

Moon

Monday

Mars

Tuesday

Mercury

Wednesday (mercredi)

Jupiter

Thursday (Donnerstag — Jupiter is the German Donar)

Venus

Friday (Venus is the German Freia)

Saturn

Saturday

Sun

Sunday (the Sun forces cannot act directly in the formation of the etheric body, but they act in their reflection from the Moon.)

Thus we see how
everything pertaining to the point of view of the Moon was brought
into relation with all that tended to quicken man's awareness of the
planets in connection with reckoning time. And the burden of the
admonition given in the old Mysteries was something as follows:
Remember, oh man, that before descending to Earth you needed forces
engendered in the Moon by the act of the Moon-beings in observing the
other planets. For the configuration of your etheric body, when
you descended to earthly life, you are indebted to the Moon's share
in what is expressed by Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and so
forth.

So on the one hand we have the rhythmical passage of the Moon
through light and darkness in its course around the Earth, and on the
other we find the whole sequence of the planets inscribed in human
consciousness. The Mysteries even added the following: Due to the
ability of the Moon-beings to behold Mars, the capacity for
speech is organized into man's etheric body, and through
their observation of Mercury, the capacity for movement
is concentrated there.

If we wish to
employ these secrets of the Moon as a medium of expression, this can
be done in an entirely different form: speech becomes eurythmy. It
comes about as follows: if we study the secrets of speech by finding
out what the Moon-beings observed when questioning Mars, and then
discover what changes these observations undergo when the
Moon-beings turn to Mercury, then speech becomes eurythmy. In other
words, if we transform the Moon-beings' Mars experiences into their
Mercury experiences, the human capacity for speech becomes the
capacity for eurythmy. That expresses the matter
cosmically.

The current engendering
in man the capacity for wisdom derives from the Moon-beings'
experiences with Jupiter; what streams through the soul as love
and beauty, from Venus; and that which permeates the etheric
body with inner soul warmth is gained from the experience
acquired by the Moon-beings' observation of Saturn.

There remains that which must be kept away — pushed back,
as it were — to prevent its interfering with the formation of
the etheric body immediately before the descent to Earth: that which
comes from the Sun. From the Sun — or from the observation of
the Sun — derive the forces from which man must be protected if
he is to become complete in himself through the integration of the
etheric body — that is, through protective
forces.

It can be said
that in this way we learn what occurs on the Moon, and at the same
time we learn how the human etheric body is formed and constituted
when man descends from the pre-earthly to the earthly existence.
Those are the facts connected with the secret of the Moon. Nowadays
we can recount such matters, but in certain of the older Mysteries
they were not merely narrated but actually experienced. What I shall
now write on the blackboard was not only known; it was an inner
experience.

Moon Day:

Tuesday:

Speech

Wednesday:

Movement

Thursday:

Wisdom

Friday:

Love, Beauty

Saturday:

Inner Soul Warmth

Sunday:

Protective Forces

By means of initiation into the Mysteries, of which I spoke
yesterday, it was possible to get beyond looking outward and
listening outward with eyes and ears in the physical vicinity
of the Earth. It was possible to become free of the physical body, to
keep aloof from it, and to live only in the etheric body; and then
the initiate lived with all that has been described. He did not live
with the speech formed in the larynx, but with the speech resounding
in Mars as cosmic language. He moved in conformity with the way in
which Mercury guided the movements in the cosmos: not merely with
feet and legs did he move, but in accord with the manner in which
Mercury directs the movements of the human being. Nor did he possess
that wisdom so laboriously acquired during childhood and early
youth — really an unwisdom in the materialistic age — but
he lived actually in the wisdom of Jupiter, because he could unite
with the Moon-beings who observed
Jupiter.

This sort of initiation really meant that the mystic was wholly
in the light shining from the Moon. He had left the Earth, no longer
a creature of flesh and blood, and lived in moonlight modified by
forces from the other planets. During these periods of spiritual
observation he simply became a light-being of the Moon — not in
a symbolical sense or in any way to be thought of as abstract, but
rather, as a man might today go to Basel and back, fully conscious of
a reality, knowing he had experienced something real. The mystic was
equally conscious of reality when he was led through the initiation
ritual to the Moon-beings.

The initiate knew that for the time being he had taken leave of
his physical body, that his soul and spirit had passed into the
light-sphere of the Moon, and that he had borne a light-body; and
because he had been united with the Moon-beings he had looked
out into planetary space, truly able to behold what could be revealed
in this vast realm.

And what was that?
Well, among other things, he observed principally that from the Sun
there emanated the forces of beings that must not be allowed to
intervene in the building of the human etheric body. The Sun appeared
as something that tended to dissolve, destroy the etheric body;
hence he knew that forces to be received by the Sun-beings must not
proceed from his etheric body, but from his higher principles, from
his ego and astral body. Only upon these must the Sun forces be
allowed to act. So he knew that for the forming of his etheric body
he must not look to the Sun but to the planets, and that he must turn
to the Sun for his astral body and especially for his ego and its
whole inner strength. The second point, then, that became manifest
through this recurring initiation into the secret of the Moon was
this, that in what pertained to his etheric body man belonged
to the planets; but for the strengthening of his astral body and most
of all his ego he must look to the Sun.

This initiation
was really of such a nature as to make the mystic one with the
moonlight; but it was by means of his own moonlight existence
that he looked into the Sun.

And now he reflected as follows: the Sun sends its light to the
Moon because this must not be imparted to man directly. The result is
moonlight in conjunction with the planetary forces, and out of this
the etheric body is formed. — That was the secret known to him
who was initiated in this way. He also knew to what extent he bore
within him the power of the spiritual Sun: he had seen it, become
conscious of it; and this was the stage of initiation at which the
initiate became a Christ bearer — that is, a Sun-being bearer,
not a Sun-being recipient. Just as the Moon itself, when at full, is
a sunlight bearer, so man became a Christ bearer, a
christophoros. This initiation leading to the stage of
christophoros was thus an absolutely real experience.

Now imagine this
actual experience through which the mystic sped away from the Earth,
as it were, and ascended as an initiated Earth-man to the
light-being; and imagine this inner, human Easter experience of
former times transformed into a cosmic festival. In later ages men no
longer knew that such things could happen; that man is really able to
withdraw from Earth conditions, unite with those of the Moon, and
from the Moon behold the Sun. But the memory of it was to be
preserved, and this we have in the Easter Festival.

The ability to experience all this did not pass over into the
later consciousness that was becoming materialistic; instead it
turned into an abstract conception. Men no longer looked inward and
said, I can unite with the moonlight. They looked at the Moon, the
full Moon, and said, It is not a question of my aspiring upward: it
is the Earth that strives to ascend. And when is this effort at its
height? When spring begins, when there burst forth from the
surface of the Earth all the forces that had lain dormant in
seeds and plants under the ground. On the Earth they become plants,
but they go further: they stream out into cosmic
space.

The old Mysteries employed this image: man can most easily attain
to the Moon-Sun initiation and become a christophoros
in the season when the inner
Earth forces, by means of the stems and leaves of plants, carry out
of the ground what then streams forth from the Earth into the cosmos;
for then he floats, as it were, on the forces that in spring ray out
from the Earth and up to the Moon. But it must be the light of the
full Moon.

All this, then, became a memory, but it also became abstract ...
It must be the light of the full Moon. ...
Subconsciously, no longer
with the clear knowledge that this could be a human experience,
people imagined that something or other — not man himself
— streamed toward the full Moon, the first one after the
beginning of spring. And what can this full Moon do now? It beholds
the Sun; that is, the first day dedicated to the Sun: the first
succeeding Sunday. Just as once a christophoros,
from the viewpoint of the
Moon, beheld the Sun-being, so now the Moon beholds the Sun —
that is, its symbolization in Sunday.

We have the
beginning of spring, March 21st, and the forces of the Earth are
burgeoning forth into the universe. We must await the proper
observer, the full Moon.

March 21st — full Moon — Sunday.

What does the Moon observe? The Sun; and the following Sunday is
fixed as Easter Sunday. This is an abstract way of determining the
date, surviving from a very real Mystery event that in former times
frequently occurred for many men.

That is actually
what our present spring Easter Festival has come to be. It represents
a Mystery act that has often been performed in spring; but it
is not the one I described day before yesterday. The latter led man
to a comprehension of the death event. I explained that the idea of
resurrection, clarified by something like the Adonis
celebration in the fall, really led men to the experience of death,
to the spiritual resurrection after about three days; and this
process of resurrection really belongs in the autumn, for the reasons
I gave.

The process I described today is a different one, performed in
other Mysteries for certain initiations — those of the Sun and
Moon; and this process confronted the neophyte with life's beginning.
So you see, we can look back at a period in which certain Mysteries
saw the descent of man from the pre-earthly to the earthly life,
while others dwelt on the ascent in the spirit. But in later epochs,
when the living substance of man's relation to the cosmic spirit
could no longer be discerned, men went so far as simply to
combine the autumn Mystery of the ascent with the spring
Mystery of the descent into one
festival.

Thus the confusion manifesting itself in the course of human
evolution is evidence of the gradual effect of materialism: not only
has the latter engendered false beliefs, but it has completely
confused men's minds concerning an issue that at one period of human
events existed, I might say, in a sacred order that caused mankind at
the approach of autumn to celebrate a cosmic festival. But this in
turn pointed to a Mystery act that evoked the thought: Nature falls
into barrenness, it wilts and dies away, and this is like the
physical dying of man; but while in Nature only the perishable is
seen to be active, there lives in man the eternal, which must now be
observed spiritually, disregarding the course of Nature, as the
element of resurrection in the spiritual world after death. The
spring Mysteries made it clear that Nature is conquered by the
spirit, that, in turn, the spirit acts out of the cosmos, and that
matter germinates and sprouts from the ground because it is driven by
the spirit.

But this was intended to remind men — not of their passing
into the spirit through death, but of their origin in the spirit,
their descent from the spiritual world. Precisely where Nature begins
to ascend, man was to remember his descent into the physical; and
where Nature disintegrates, man was to contemplate his ascent, his
spiritual resurrection. There is no doubt that such an
understanding of man's relation to the cosmos intensified his
soul life enormously.

But this varied according to the locality. In olden times some
were definitely inclined to be autumn peoples and others rather
spring peoples. Among the former were to be found the Adonis
Mysteries; among the latter, other Mysteries concerned with what I
have set forth today. And only those seekers after wisdom of whom it
is correctly reported that, like Pythagoras, they moved about from
place to place, from one Mystery to another, only those enjoyed the
fullness of human experience. They would pass from a sanctuary where
they could participate in the autumn secret, which is really the Sun
secret, to one where the spring secret was revealed, the Moon secret.
For this reason it was reported again and again of the consummate old
initiates that they traveled from one sanctuary to another. It can
truly be said of these that they had a certain inner experience of
the year and its festivals. An old initiate of that sort could say to
himself, I come to a place where the Adonis Festivals are celebrated,
and I can witness the cosmic autumn and the rays of the spiritual Sun
at the beginning of winter's night; I wander to another, where the
Mysteries of spring are observed, and I can behold the secret of the
Moon. — Thus he acquired an inner knowledge of all that relates
to the whole meaning of the
year.

You see, our
Easter Festival has really had something saddled on it that is not
right. It should really be a spring commemoration of burial; and this
commemoration of burial in the spring should at the same time be an
incentive to work, such as the more primitive man needed during the
summer time: that is what such burial festivals were in their appeal
to the human spirit. Easter was a festival of admonition regarding
the work of summer, just as the autumn festival of the resurrection
of the spiritual world was a festival celebrated in the season when
the labor was completed. But it was of the utmost importance for
man's soul and spirit that, when his work was finished, he should
become aware of and inwardly experience the eternal in himself
by contemplating the resurrection in the spiritual world, the
days that follow upon death.

In passing, then,
from Earth secrets to cosmic secrets, from Earth wisdom to cosmic
wisdom, we can come to know what I should like to call the inner
structure of the order of the year, as indicated by the festivals.
But much of what had been hidden in them has
disappeared.

Today I wanted to
present this subject to you by considering the conditions of the
firmament itself. Tomorrow I shall endeavor, as far as time permits,
to penetrate still deeper into it in the light of certain Mystery
sanctuaries.